Re: These NeXTbuntu guys

[Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf]

Hi Andreas, long time no see ...

Am 29.08.2006 um 12:58 schrieb Andreas Höschler:

> > > I'm all for cooperation. However, that doesn't mean
> > > beginning a dialogue with a gesture of submission.
> > > Our intent was not to ignore GNUstep. I agree, our
> > > first contact was more like a fender bender.
> > > But clearly, GNUstep is not ready for prime time, not
> > > after 10 years of hard work and having access to all
> > > kinds of legacy code.
> >
> > This is quite incorrect. In fact it depends on what you consider  
> > "GNUstep", eg gnustep-base is very read for prime time for a very  
> > long time. And in use in realworld enterprise systems.
>
> Not only base! We have a full-featured database application running  
> in a real enterprise (base, gui, back). There are a few issues, but  
> with some patience we have always been able to make a downloaded  
> cvs-tree working reasonably enough for real world business  
> applications. The look & feel was a problem indeed, but with Etoile  
> this issue was addressed nicely and we are confident that this will  
> solve the customer acceptance issue.
>
> However, we are still in the process of assembling a desktop that  
> at least comes close to what can be found on a Mac. Right now we  
> are using Window Maker (has Azalea a dock? If so we never found out  
> how to get it to work), EtoileMenuServer.app and our own Finder.app  
> (GWorkspace does not play nicely with EtoileMenuServer and has no  
> thumbnails in the browser) and thus got an acceptable working  
> environment for the first time. However, there are still (too many)  
> issues.
>
> • If an app hangs Window Maker is dead. No chance to start  
> Terminal.app to kill the application. This is not acceptable.
> • As far as we know there is no nice GNUstep application yet to  
> kill a bad process (Terminal.app + kill ... is no option for  
> enterprise users)
> • Although it is said that Copy & Paste  (at least for text) works  
> between X-apps and GNUstep apps. I cannot confirm that. My collegue  
> is able to copy from Firefox to TextEdit.app, I am not (on the same  
> machine). We have not yet found out why. So I can't confirm that  
> this works generally. It would be nice to have a GNUstep based  
> browser (better integration) but I see that this is a major task
>
> 	How much work would it be to write a GNUstep wrapper for Firefox  
> (Objective-C++)?

That already exists:

http://www.caminobrowser.org/ is a fully featured Cocoa wrapper for  
the gecko engine (firefox)

and the folks there are at the progress to iron out some obstacles  
that would hinder the port to GNUstep: getting rid of remaining  
Carbon widgets (in the HTML view) and base it on Cocoa using Cairo  
(which GNUstep should be able to use).

Check out http://www.caminobrowser.org/development/ and http:// 
forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=12 if you want to contact the  
developers

> so I think one could live with this one alien (next to Star Office)  
> for a while if at least copy & paste between Firefox, Star Office  
> and GNUstep apps really worked (please let me know what I could try  
> to get this working on my account).
>
> I am swapping out the rest of my thoughts in a separate mail  
> [GNUstep (desktop) for enterprises].
>
> Regards,
>
>  Andreas

greetings, Lars